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The chapter begins with Graff speaking to Admiral Chamrajnagar. Chamrajnagar isn’t too happy with the length of time that it took Graff to get Ender to Eros. Chamrajnagar goes onto explain that the children from Battle School are now under his control at Eros. Chamrajnagar also speaks of the beauty behind the ships in outer space and their amazing ability to communicate with each other.
The scene turns to Ender who is having trouble adapting to life on the asteroid of Eros. Things are all so crammed and everybody is a stranger to him. He believes that they are forcing him to live the life of a loner on purpose.
The one thing that Ender does enjoy on Eros is a game simulator where he can control a ship that has to take out enemy ships. It’s a game that that constantly changes and quickly adapts to his moves, thus forcing him to come up with new moves. Ender enjoys this new challenge and continuously gets better at it.
As he gets better at the game, it also becomes harder. Instead of only controlling one ship, he begins to control multiple ships and he gets to choose what they do. People even drop by to watch him play.
Eventually, the game becomes too easy for Ender and he complains to Graff about it. Graff doesn’t have much of a reaction.
Shortly after, Ender encounters a strange old man in his room. The door is locked, so Ender is stuck in his room with him. The man doesn’t say a thing or respond to Ender. Ender passes the time by excising, all the while the old man watches him.
Eventually, for no apparent reason, the old man attacks Ender and pins him down. Ender admits defeat. The man basically tells Ender that he should never underestimate his enemy no matter how passive they seem. The man then introduces himself as Ender’s teacher.
Ender’s new teacher lets Ender know that he is going to begin preparing the games in the simulator. He is going to make the enemy close to impossible for Ender to defeat.
The last thing that Ender’s new teacher reveals before leaving Ender’s room is his name: Mazer Rackham. Mazer Rackham is the star soldier who led the International Fleet to victory in the last invasion. Somehow, Rackham is still alive despite the years that have gone by.
Before long, Ender begins training with Rackham. He learns things from Rackham from the invasion videos that he himself had never seen.
At one point, Ender asks Rackham how he was able to survive so long. He responded by letting him know that they kept him alive by using relativity in their favor. He was put in a ship that continued forward at an incredibly fast speed. Time slows down when objects are going quickly so fifty years turned into eight years for him.
Later, Ender asks Rackham a very important question: how did he defeat the buggers in the Second Invasion? Rackham begins to explain his theory that led to their defeat. He describes how insects all seem to operate with a queen in charge. He assumed that the bugger fleet was also being led by a queen, so he found himself the queen ship and destroyed it. Once the queen was destroyed, the other buggers were left defenseless and were killed or captured.
Unfortunately for Rackham, nobody ever came to believe his theory of a queen bugger. The scientists of his time couldn’t bear the fact that they were outsmarted by a soldier so they never accepted his theory. The body of a queen bugger was also never found, so there was no proof of Rackham’s theory.
Rackham goes onto to describe the history of Eros. Eros was not at first a human colony, but a bugger colony
that was used by the buggers during the First Invasion. Humans took over the asteroid and reverse engineered the technology that the buggers had on it. Using their technology, they were now able to control things like gravity and stellar energy. They also learned what little death meant to the buggers. Only death of the queen made a difference to them.
BROWSE CONTENTS
ENDER'S GAME -- CHAPTER 14: ENDER'S TEACHER
Rackham explains how in this new invasion, there won’t be much of a chance to defeat the buggers by killing the queen first. The queen is probably hidden away safe on a home planet. To defeat the buggers, the International Fleet must take on whole armadas of bugger ships.
Luckily, the International Fleet has advanced its weaponry. The Dr. Device is their top weapon. Once fired at the enemies, the Dr. Device causes a sphere of destruction; within these spheres electrons separate away from each other, thus dematerializing any ship that is caught within it. The sphere even causes a chain reaction, a domino effect, in which more spheres are created from the first.
Eventually, Ender begins training in a new way. He now controls an entire fleet in the game with separate squadrons of ships. Each squadron has its own leader who is positioned in another simulator. He communicates with these squadron leaders through a headset, and he only gets to know their capabilities through these means. When Ender first put on his headset he was shocked to learn that his squadron leaders are none other than friends, allies, and his former toon leaders from Battle School.
Soon enough, Ender grows to learn the strengths and weaknesses of all of his squadron leaders. They practice over and over again together in the simulators. Rackham helps quite a bit, and he even shows Ender how his fleet looks like to the enemy.
Together, the squadrons work together just as well as, if not better than, the simulated bugger fleets. Unlike the bugger fleets, each squadron has the ability to think for itself.
After a while, Rackham feels like Ender is ready for his most challenging simulation yet. Rackham says that he
will control the enemy ships in a simulation. Ender and his fleet will be facing the buggers in an all-out attack like that of the Second Invasion. Rackham will constantly adapt to Ender’s movements and he will continue to present a greater and greater challenge to his squadron.
Rackham gives one last speech before Ender’s challenge. He tells Ender of all the things he has lost, like family, in order to help the human race succeed. Now, Ender is humanities last hope since all other of Rackham’s pupils have failed before and the time to stop the bugger threat is fast approaching.
Before long, Ender and his squadron leaders are in their simulators facing this new challenge that Rackham has brought forth. Ender is able to easily defeat the enemies by first getting them to come in close to each other and then by shooting the Dr. Device.
After this first simulation is over, Rackham brings on more and more simulations that all grow more difficult. Ender wins them, but not without heavy losses.
Ender’s nights are hard. He has one particular nightmare that is troubling. He dreams of the Giant’s game that he faced in Battle School. The villagers are buggers who admire him. Most bothersome, though, is the end of the dream when he sees himself killing Valentine.
Ender isn’t the only one who is tired. Petra is also very tired and Ender has been using her a bit too much in the simulations. One day, she suffers from major burnout and gets most of her fleet destroyed. Luckily, the other squadron leaders with Ender’s command are able to fix the job. Petra, however, is broken too much to come back as a strong squadron leader. Ender realizes, now, that he must remember that his leaders are human and cannot be pushed too far.
Eventually, Ender also collapses under the stress of the situation. He is given time to rest until he feels well enough to battle again. His days of rest are a bit alarming since he sees illusions. But, he fares well during the simulation.
Ender continues defeating the enemy in the simulator, all the while he deals with horrid nightmares at night.
One day, Ender is surprised to wake up in his room without Rackham there and without his door being locked. He walks to the simulator to practice there. Instead of practicing, though, he learns that today he will have to take his final exam. Today, the very special simulation will require him to battle around a planet. International Fleet officials will observe him as he fights.
The simulation begins and Ender is handed older ships to do the battling. He is up against tremendous odds since he is incredibly outnumbered. The battle is a tough one. Ender has his ships go in and out of formation to cause chaos and to allow some of his ships to get closer and closer to the planet. Soon, his ships are close enough to the planet to enter its atmosphere. Ender’s plan is to get all the ships he can muster into the atmosphere so he can shoot the planet with each of the ship’s Dr. Devices.
Eventually, Ender’s plan works. The Dr. Devices are shot at the planet and the planet explodes. The resulting explosion takes out just about all of the enemy ships around the planet. The planet has been turned into clumps of dirt.
The International Fleet administrators that have been observing the whole scene are overcome with joy. Ender is surprised at their reaction.
Ender is even more surprised, though, when Rackham approaches and reveals the truth behind the whole situation. Ever since Rackham took over as his teacher, Ender has been in control of the actual International Fleet. Ender has been running the course of the real show this whole time.
Later in his room, Ender is overtaken by the enormity of the situation. While others are celebrating his victory and hailing Ender as a hero, he is trying to cope with the fact that he not only killed an entire race of beings, but he also sacrificed the lives of countless men along the way. Rackham points out that he is not the one responsible. It is, in fact, those people who used and manipulated Ender who are responsible.
Ender asks to go to sleep, but Graff and Rackham have other plans. They want to escape off of Eros with him since Ender’s life is now on the line. It turns out that humanity is turning to chaos since countries no longer have a common enemy to bind them together. The Polemarch and his Russian loyalists, even those within the International Fleet, have been told to eliminate Ender. He fears that Ender will take charge of one of the armies on Earth and defeat the Russians. A new World War is about to break out and Ender is one of the enemy’s prime targets.
Ender just wants to sleep and he does sleep. Graff and Rackham make sure his room is guarded. Eventually, though, after some chaos on Eros, Ender is greeted by his friends. Bean lets Ender know that the Locke Proposal has ended the chaos on Earth.
His friends remain in his room as they try to figure out what their future now holds.
by Orson Scott Card
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